Coal in President Obama’s climate cross hairs

The Obama administration is preparing to draw a red line against coal pollution, with a proposal that for the first time would limit climate-changing emissions from all future power plants.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rule, set to come out Friday morning, fulfills a key promise to President Barack Obama’s environmental base — while offering a potent line of attack for Republicans in 2014. It kicks off a major effort by Obama’s agencies to tackle climate change without waiting for help from Congress.

Obama’s critics say the emerging technology is too expensive and amounts to a ban on building coal plants. The administration argues it has invested unprecedented amounts of money in advanced coal technology, and it’s time for the industry to step up and cut down greenhouse gas pollution.

The rule is the first of two major climate regulations that EPA has in the works. A second, more sweeping draft rule due in June will take aim at carbon pollution from the nation’s thousands of existing power plants — the largest source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Obama ordered the EPA to take the steps in his climate policy speech at Georgetown University this summer, saying that “I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing.” But the agency has been headed in this direction ever since it established its first greenhouse gas regulations in 2009, including tightening fuel economy standards on cars. In 2010, EPA agreed to tackle power plants after settling a lawsuit by environmentalists.

The administration hopes the rules will bolster the United States’ credibility in global climate talks that are aimed at crafting a treaty by 2015.

In her speech announcing the rule Friday morning, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy will call Obama’s Georgetown speech “one of the most important speeches of his Presidency,” according to excerpts of the speech obtained by POLITICO.

“Less than three months ago, President Obama stood outside in sweltering heat to unveil a new national plan to confront the growing threat of climate change,” McCarthy will say, announcing that the agency is now “taking one of those important steps, with a proposal to limit carbon pollution from new power plants.”

“Power plants are the single largest sources of carbon pollution,” McCarthy’s speech says. “New power plants – both natural gas and coal-fired – can minimize their carbon emissions by taking advantage of modern technologies. These technologies offer them a clear pathway forward today and in the long term.”

Environmental groups have long been pushing Obama to take this kind of action, while Republican lawmakers and coal industry supporters have warned it would boost both energy prices and unemployment.

“The President is leading a war on coal and what that really means for Kentucky families is a war on jobs,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement late Thursday, as details of the proposal began to leak out. “And the announcement by the EPA is another back door attempt by President Obama to fulfill his long-term commitment to shut down our nation’s coal mines.”

Just about everyone acknowledged that the rule’s fate will be decided in court — industry-backed lawsuits are inevitable.

“These limits on carbon pollution are so common sense that most Americans assume they’re already in place,” said League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski. “Carbon pollution is already increasing rates of asthma attacks and extreme weather like floods, heat waves, and droughts nationwide. Any attempts by Congress to block implementation of these limits would go against the majority of Americans who support these common sense steps and would only benefit the country’s biggest polluters.”

Opponents argue that the standards are unachievable, carbon capture is too expensive and the technology isn’t adequate to meet Clean Air Act requirements. Setting such tight standards will “destroy, not encourage, the development” of new carbon capture projects, said Mike Duncan, CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

While it won’t affect existing plants, EPA’s proposal would put the squeeze on coal: Any coal-burning power plant built in the future would be limited to 1,100 pounds per megawatt hour of CO2 emissions, according to McCarthy’s planned speech. That means a state-of-the-art coal plant would have to employ expensive and thus-far uncommonly used technologies to capture around 40 percent of its carbon emissions.

Obama’s critics say it would make building any coal plant a non-option. With scores of older coal plants expected to close in the next several years, that would be yet another hit to a coal mining industry that is hemorrhaging jobs in states like West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.The rule is already a political talking point for 2014 races in coal-heavy states like Kentucky and West Virginia.

The rule also imposes separate, slightly tighter carbon limit on new power plants fueled by natural gas. But those plants aren’t expected to have trouble meeting it – the standard is set to match a top-flight natural gas plant’s carbon output. Large natural gas plants would be capped at 1,000 pounds per megawatt hour of CO2. Smaller natural gas plants get a little more leeway, with an 1,100 pounds per megawatt hour limit.

The rule wouldn’t affect nuclear plants or wind or solar power, which produce no greenhouse gases.